China began its most extensive lockdown in two years Monday to conduct mass testing and control a growing outbreak in Shanghai.
in Shanghai as questions are raised about the economic toll of the nation’s “zero-COVID” strategy.
Residents will be required to stay home and deliveries will be left at checkpoints to ensure there is no contact with the outside world. Offices and all businesses not considered essential will be closed and public transport suspended. Residents wearing face masks to help protect from the coronavirus line up outside a supermarket at night to buy groceries on Sunday, March 27, 2022, in Shanghai, China.Some workers, including traders at the city’s stock market, were preparing to stay within a COVID-19 “bubble” for the duration of the lockdown.
Security guards wearing protective suits stand watch as a masked woman waits for her parcel at a residential buildings locked down for health monitoring following a COVID-19 case detected in the area, Monday, March 28, 2022, in Beijing.“I think if the closure continues like this, our school workers will not be affected much, but what about those who work in the real economy? How can their business be maintained?” Huang said.
Traffic police wearing protective suits check on a vehicle before an underpass tunnel which has closed following the coronavirus outbreak in Shanghai, China.China has reported more than 56,000 confirmed cases nationwide this month, with the surge in Jilin accounting for most of them. The new measures being enforced in Shanghai aim to “curb the virus spread, protect people’s life and health, and achieve the dynamic zero-COVID target as soon as possible,” the city’s COVID-19 prevention and control office stated in an announcement Sunday evening.AP
Security guards in protective gear load goods on a trolley to transfer to barricaded residential buildings in Beijing.With China’s economic growth already slowing, the extreme measures are seen as worsening difficulties hitting employment, consumption and even global supply chains. With a 21-day curfew in place for all foreigners arriving from abroad, travel between China and other countries has fallen dramatically.